Empty Nest: First Full Day

I wake up at 6:00, a bit too early since I didn't fall asleep until well after 1:00.  I try to go back to sleep: Lamaze breathing, prayer, rambling thoughts.  Nothing works, and I get up at 7:00.  I pull on a Reed College t-shirt, souvenir of God knows how many college trips, and the crumpled jeans I wore in the car all day yesterday, and proceed to waste 20 minutes on the computer before heading out for a walk.  

Walk the 3 miles to Lower Lake.  Hot and muggy; should have foresworn the jeans for soccer shorts.  A few mallards scattered across the lake, a catbird calling in brush that looks suspiciously like a kudzu cousin, cowbirds overhead.  I am in the mood for a Cooper's and I get cowbirds.  Okey dokey.  I use the walking time to think about and pray for my three children, now scattered across the country.  There is a lot to pray for, believe me.   I'm delayed slipping back into the house by a conversation with my neighbor, just back from 12 miles on her bike. Her three children are about 10-15 years ahead of mind -- her oldest used to babysit for my youngest -- and we discuss the joys and frustrations of parenting young adults, whose successes and missteps are so entirely beyond our control.  

Take a bath.  Find khakis and Hawaiian print shirt that will get me through church, work at home this afternoon, and another meeting at church.  Save time since it's too humid to bother with my hair.  

Only a few minutes late to adult ed class, which is a spectacular presentation by our associate pastor's husband , who happens to be a professor of religious studies, on women in the early Jesus movement.  He notes that we have to look for "erasure marks" in the Bible to learn about women in the early, almost pre-church church.  The hints are few and far between and sometimes eradicated, as was the case with the active disciple Junia, whose name was actually changed in the Biblical text to the masculine form of Junius during the European Middle Ages.  Our lecturer runs through the references to the activities of women in the Gospels, in Acts, and in those books attributed to Paul which are believed to have actually been written by Paul.  It's in those early books that Paul refers with gratitude and appreciation to women such as Lydia, clearly a minister in the early church, and reminds us that "in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor free nor slave, nor male nor female, for you are all one."  It's only in the later books, when whoever is writing under Paul's name becomes concerned with establishing the church as an institution along the lines of the Roman Empire ~ which is to say along hierarchical and patriarchal lines ~ that a harsh and rigid attitude toward women becomes apparent, an attitude completely at odds with the one evinced by Jesus and the historical Paul.  

Great music in church  today. Next week it will all be African in celebration of World Communion Sunday.  

Spend the afternoon finishing up a paper for my class, doing laundry, and bringing our bank accounts up to date.  That doesn't mean they have money in them, of course.  

A couple of hours back at church working on Katrina relief -- we are close to being assigned two families to assist, so tonight we got ourselves organized to do that.  I wasn't looking for another family in my life right now, my house having just emptied itself of children, but the only way even to begin to repay all the folks who helped my Tulane freshman daughter is to pass it on, which I'm happy to do.  

Home and the day is over.  My husband has dinner in the oven and West Wing (good tv) and Desperate Housewives (trash tv) are calling.   I can't stand reality tv, or talk shows, or tv comedy, but otherwise I am completely indiscriminate in my viewing. 

Those 50 essays I was supposed to grade this week-end?  Well, think Scarlet O'Hara.